Social Philosophy and the Polish Experiment

Social philosophy and the polish experiment Jan Zielonka The real influence of modern social philosophy on particular emancipatory move ments is very difficult to estimate. On the one hand, it is not enough for revolutio nary generations to march under the uni versai slogan ’égalité, liberté, fraternité’. It is also necessary to know how to change the existing system and what the society should look like after this change. What about our new, re-dreamed model of liberty, equality and fraternity? How to implement these ideas into common-day practice; and how much will they be affected by the means which we intend to use in order to abolish the previous, unjust system? There are a lot of such difficult questions and there are social philosophers who are working on them. However, on the other hand, we hardly ever find the great fathers of particular social and political doctrines, as well as their ideas, in the first wave of revolutions. Robespierre and Saint-Just rather than Rousseau, and Lenin rather than Marx, influenced directly rank and file of the emancipatory movements of their time. They all were inspired by a great master, but adopted only those parts of their master’s ideas, which were appropriate to the particular historical situation. By doing this they left out some important elements of the original doctrine, some others they exaggerated deliberately, using them as a motto of their revolutionary practice. Following up our examples, Rousseau’s idea of the social contract was used as an excuse for the Jacobin terror, Marx’s idea of the ’class war’, permitted Bolshevics to establish a specific dictatorship of the proletariat. Significantly, they both dropped important elements of their master’s doctrine, like e.g. Rousseau’s idea of direct democracy in preferably small republics, or the pluralist elements in the doctrine of Marx. This process of doctrinal change and re-adaptation always provokes great theoretical controversies. As for Marx, for example, there is still a hot debat about what is real marxism and what is only the unjustified warp of his ideas. Leszek Kolakowski in his book The main currents of marxism explicitly states, for exam ple , that marxism can not longer be considered as solely the work of Marx,but also as everything that was developed on the basis of his work.1 The problem looks rather scholastic, in particular because Marx himself did not expect that his ideas would be implemented most consistently in Russia. And this is in fact nothing exceptional. Montesquieu did not foresee that his doctrine would find an imple- 82 Jan Zielonka Social Philosophy and the Polish Experiment mentation in the American Constitution. In recent decades the problem is even more complicated. The prediction of the end of ideology turned out to be false. Time and again disillusioned masses are on the move. This process of emancipation requires a doctrinal guideline. However the lack of such guideline is very characteristic nowadays. We observe not only a lack of great ideologies and doctrines, but even a lack of perspective on long-term programmes. On the one hand, evolutionary theories, still dominated by mar- xists, are bowed down by the heritage of a discouraging marxist reality in the communist countries of today. On the other hand, the so-called functionalistic social theories (Popper, Rawls, etc) cannot fill the gap between their abstract social models and the aspiration of the great emancipatory mass-movements in some countries.2 In a country like Britain e.g., this gap was for many decades fruitfully filled by the existing practice of direct involvement of particular thinkers in political life as B. Shaw, S. and B. Webbs, G. D. H. Cole or H. Lasky. However this practice became obsolete with the death of persons like Richard Crossman or Anthony Crosland at the beginning of the seventies. Today, even in the American economy policy, with its profusion of doctrines, we can hardly recognize the original ideas of the father of this neo-liberal policy - professor F. Hayek. This article is not intended to answer the general question: what is the influence of social philosophies on emancipatory movements? The idea is to present a contemporary case study of the ’Polish experiment’, created by the trade union Solidarnosc in 1980-1981. On the basis of the experiences with more than 30 years of a communist system in Poland, a new, original vision of state and society was created. This vision, based on the idea of selfgovernment, participation and self-management, closely resembles the historical ideas of social anarchism and could be included in the doctrinal current, called ’the anti-state collectivism’. This article shows the structural similarity between the Solidarnosc programme and this anti-state collectivist doctrinal current. I do not indicate historical conti nuity or direct histrical inspiration of this doctrinal orientation on the Solidarnosc programme. Although we can find some evidence of the existence of such a continuity, the lack of recognition of its doctrinal ancestry is a general tendency of the Polish movement. The communist system is characterized by direct intervention of the state, centralized bureaucracy in every area of public life, that leads toward disintegra tion of the Polish society. Thus it is not by accident that the experiences with this system resulted in the creation of an anti-state collectivist vision. Therefore, in my future studies, I shall look for the more specific causes of this phenomenon. 83 SG 83/2 (jg XXX) 1. Doctrinal parallels When looking for certain parallels between the ideas carried on by Solidarnosc and the views of the men we can call their ’precursors’ let us first direct our attention to the trend in social philosophy, e.g. represented by Robert Nozick in his book Anarchy, State and Utopia, advocating a minimal state limited to the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of con- racts, and so on.3 Nozick and his famous predecessors argue that a more extensive state will violate the right of people not to be forced to do certain things, and is thus unjustified. But some of their arguments, e.g. that a 'minimal state is inspiring as well as right’, emerge from a pure individualistic approach, while Solidarnosc antistate arguments have rather a collectivist nature. So, it is better to include Solidarnosc into the trend which Rodney Backer recently called ’the anti-state collectivism’.4 This is not only because the new-born Polish ideas are more comparable to Peter Kropotkin’s ideaof ’mutual aid’, than to Max Stirner’s idea of a ’union of egoists’ (as indicated even by the name of the movement - Solidarity). It is mainly because Solidarnosc, although calling for the replacement of the authoritarian state by some forms of nongovernmental cooperation between individuals, considered these forms as collectivist by nature. Here we can recognize the idea of David Owen, Charles Fourier and in particular Pierre Proudhon, with his vision of a great federation of communes and workers’ co-operatives. Going further, we can recognize Peter Kropotkin’s local communes and the idea of ’mutual agreement’ between the members of a society. This mutual agreement is based on the sum of social customs and habits. We can also find traces of the French syndicalists’ ideas with their emphasis on the revolutionary trade union, both as an organ of struggle (the general strike being its most potent tactic) and also as a foundation on which the future free society might be constructed. From this it is a short way to the utopia of Tolstoy and to the pacifist anarchism that appeared mainly in Holland, Britain and the United States before and during the Second World War.5 The latter accepted the idea of a general strike as a weapon which on the one hand allows fundamental social change, and on the other hand compromises their pacifist ideal by not using negative (i.e. violent) means. In the area of industrial relations we can see specifically the parallel between Solidarnosc’ concept of ’self-management’ and the British theory of ’guild socia lism’. I am especially thinking of S. G. Hobson andG. D. H. Cole and their idea that the control of each industry should be left to democratically organized, decentralized guilds, while the state should merely own the property that the guilds will use. It is also characteristic that in going beyond these original socialist roots we can more easily find some parallels to the conservative collectivists, like D. H. 84 Jan Zielonka Social Philosophy and the Polish Experiment Lawrence or G. K. Chesterton (and his book The Napoleon ofNotting Hill, 1904) than to the pure individualistic trends of liberals or neoliberals. This anti-state collectivist family mentioned above,divided and diverse as they are, shares a common approach to the basic social questions. All these doctrinal trends emphasize the special role of social and economic relations as a main field in which organization is necessary. They have different opinions concerning the way of changing society (violent or peaceful). Some distrust all cooperation beyond the barest minimum for an ascetic life while others envisage an extensive network of interconnecting mutual aid institutions. But they all share the view that econo mic and social relations should dominate political ones. Some called themselves apolitical or even anti-political. All these trends also share a naturalistic view of society. They believe that man is naturally social and that he naturally has all the attributes which make him capable of living in freedom and in social concord. Their emphasis on the natural origin of societies leads them to reject not only Rousseau’s idea of a social contract, but also the authoritarian communism of Marx with its emphasis on a dictatorship of the proletariat to impose equality by external force All of these trends contain deeply moralistic elements.

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